Leaner, Meaner Marines

Even with a Taftian foreign policy and a defensive grand strategy, America will still need forces that can act overseas. Our New Model Defense Department will rely on the Marine Corps to provide them.

Situations where we send in the Marines will resemble President Jefferson’s war with the Barbary pirates. Unless we are directly attacked, we will avoid wars with other states, because their most likely outcome will be the spread of statelessness—watch Libya. Instead we will find ourselves up against Fourth Generation, non-state opponents in situations where government has lost its grip.

Some of these enemies, including pirates, will attack Americans, and we will be forced to respond. Our response will not be to conquer other countries and attempt to turn them into Switzerland. Most often, the Marines will carry out raids, which will last hours or days, occasionally weeks. They will have two purposes: punish those who harbor our attackers and shift the local balance of power against our enemies. To non-state entities, the local balance counts for more than their relationship with the United States. If they know the price of attacking us will be to see their local enemies triumph over them, they may leave us alone.

Thus, just as we will still need a strong Navy, we will also require a capable Marine Corps. The question is how to get it within a modest defense budget. As with the Navy, the answer begins with adopting the old Prussian reserve system. Today’s Marine Corps has three active divisions and one reserve. The new Marine Corps will have one active division and two reserve. But those reserve divisions will be just as capable as their active-duty counterpart because whole battalions will go into reserve together. On recall, everyone will be doing the same jobs and working with the same people as they did on active service.

Another major cut can come from Marine aviation. Rhetorically, its purpose is to support the Marine on the ground. In reality, high-priced aircraft do that poorly. Money can be saved by dumping most of the aircraft, including the complex V-22 Osprey tilt-rotor and transferring the Air Force’s A-10s to the Marines. The A-10 is the only American aircraft that effectively provides ground support.

Another path to savings is to have the Marine Corps follow its own doctrine. The Corps has an advantage over other services in having adopted Third Generation maneuver doctrine in the early 1990s. But it has never applied the maneuver doctrine to its force structure. Doing so would reduce spending while improving military effectiveness.

One source of savings derives from the way maneuver warfare reshapes logistics. In Second Generation attrition warfare, the assumption is that all units are engaging the enemy almost all the time. That requires each combat unit to have an extensive logistics train. In maneuver warfare, the operative assumption is that most units are in reserve, waiting to maneuver. Logistics support is funneled to the few units in contact with the enemy. The overall logistics train shrinks dramatically as the “tooth to tail” ratio rises.

Similarly, maneuver doctrine calls for radical decentralization of decision-making. Orders tell subordinates what result is needed; they are left free as to means. Headquarters shrink. Few things are more dangerous than overly large headquarters, because they lead senior officers to meddle endlessly in their subordinates’ business. The Corps likes to present itself as “lean and mean,” but as far as senior officers and headquarters are concerned, it is morbidly obese. It rosters more than 80 generals, with attendant flocks of colonels and lieutenant colonels to serve as horse-holders and flower-strewers.

Real life in the Corps ends with the battalion. Almost everything above that level is a pack of rocks junior Marines have to carry. Our new Corps would get rid of almost all of it. It would have six generals: three division commanders, a Commandant, an Assistant Commandant, and one general to command the schools at Quantico.

When I first encountered the Marine Corps in the early 1970s as a Senate staffer, it thought little about programs and money. If it needed equipment, it took it from someone else and painted it Marine Corps green. Sadly, in the mid-1990s the Corps decided that it too would be about programs and budgets. But the memory of the older way is not entirely lost. The current Commandant has been wondering aloud if it might be revived. If he acts as well as he talks, the Marine Corps will be better prepared for the post-empire era than any other service.

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6 Responses to Leaner, Meaner Marines

Mr Lind: It’s time to call your bluff. I’m a TAC subscriber, used to call myself a paleo (that term seems to have fallen out of use, in favor of what I’m not clear), I’ve read lots of your odd columns, and unlike you I’m a veteran – peacetime and combat – and I have a PhD. I might be wrong, hell I’m wrong about a lot, but I’ve “been there” and have the “union card.”

I think we are in violent agreement that the DoD is totally messed up and the U.S. military needs root-and-branch reform. I’ll even give you that the USMC, my own service, has lost its way in the recent decade of misguided wars.

But it’s time to call your bluff. At its most basic, what ARE you talking about, sir?

I could throw so many darts here, indicating you have absolutely zero familiarity with anything military beyond a book, so I’ll limit myself to a few comments.

How, pray tell, can we implement a “Prussian system” in America in 2012? Notwithstanding that said system was very nice in 1870, and maybe even 1914 – though it lost the war that counted – I simply have no concept how you think a Teutonic levee-en-masse conscription system can work in 21st century America, with its volunteer forces. Huh?

“The overall logistics train shrinks dramatically as the “tooth to tail” ratio rises.” Um, what? Again, what ARE you talking about? Perhaps true – maybe – if you’re, say I East Prussian Corps and when the balloon goes up in 1914 you have to fight … in your own corps district. When you’re the 32nd MEU and you’re half a world away, and everything – everything – you have and need to do you mission you have to bring with you, logistics is the difference between success and failure. And, say what you will about the U.S. military – and there’s a lot of bad – we rock at logistics, and we have for a century. It’s been the reason for so many of our successes.

“Real life in the Corps ends with the battalion.” Says who, you? What’s the hate for officers and staffs? I used to be enlisted, I sorta get that, but then I grew up. Sure, we have too many officers and staffs, but if you think real life disappears above LtCol you simply are a pudgy REMF who knows nothing about warfare.

“The new Marine Corps will have one active division and two reserve. But those reserve divisions will be just as capable as their active-duty counterpart because whole battalions will go into reserve together.” Love to know how USMCR battalions will be “just as capable” as active ones. I’ve been both active and reserve: I call BS again, you have simply no idea whereof you speak. And what, outside your weird Prussian fantasy life (does it include horses? I bet it does) does whole battalions going into reserve together … mean? Clearly you have no idea how the Corps generates forces. Learn first, then speak.

And … making the A-10 the USMC fixed wing solution? Um, what? Great platform, wish the USAF would keep them, but it’s in no way navalized, so what is the USMC supposed to, you know, *do* with it? And don’t knock the V-22 – it had massive teething problems but works superbly now — why don’t you go out to Afghanistan for a while and see? Oh wait, you’re “busy,” right?

You talk a good game, Mr Lind – prove you actually have game by posting this comment — and answer me.

Clear thinking. Too bad Obama did not grasp the fact Russia and China had a larger interest in stability in Afghanistan, than did the US. How many hundreds of billions of dollars were squandered, due to poor advice from Hillary Clinton, Robert Gates and General Petraeus?

When I was a 2nd Lt in 1990, your ideas had some appeal–what 2nd Lt doesn’t like the theory of maneuver warfare? By the time you came to speak to my AWS class in 1997, your schtick had worn thin. To think that you are still performing the same old “third and fourth generation war” song and dance 15 years later!

I was going to add to DevilDawg’s critique of your half-formed fantasy, but what’s the point? Everything DevilDawg said was true.

If Lind had postponed his work in the Senate and spent time carrying a rifle, he would never have written such preposterous sentences: “But those reserve divisions will be just as capable as their active-duty counterpart because whole battalions will go into reserve together. On recall, everyone will be doing the same jobs and working with the same people as they did on active service.”

Walking 20 miles while carry 6o to 80 pounds cannot be done by those who have not had sustained training to build endurance. Most silly and dangerous advice comes from neocons who ran from their war, but do not hesitate to demand others endanger themselves.

Lind states he is not of that political persuasion, but his profound ignorance, if ever accepted, will needlessly kill many people.

They will have two purposes: punish those who harbor our attackers and shift the local balance of power against our enemies. To non-state entities, the local balance counts for more than their relationship with the United States. If they know the price of attacking us will be to see their local enemies triumph over them, they may leave us alone.